Illinois Keeps Big Ten Door Cracked for Wisconsin, Michigan

On Sunday, the Michigan Wolverines defeated the Illinois Fighting Illini, 70-61. The victory pushed the Wolverines to 9-4 and kept the top four teams — Ohio State, Michigan State, Michigan and Wisconsin — all within one game of each other. Chances are, if it wasn’t for Illinois, we would already be primed for the March 4th battle between the Buckeyes and Spartans to decide the conference’s fate. In all likelihood, this will still be the case — according to TeamRankings, there is a 93% chance one of these two teams wins the conference. But if Wisconsin wins out, they will earn at the least a share of the regular season title, and Michigan would need just one Michigan State loss to clinch a share if they can win their final five contests.

The odds are long, but not unfathomable. Ken Pom’s odds give the Badgers a 5.7% chance of finishing the season without another loss and the Wolverines a 3.3% chance. The Badgers control their own destiny to boot, and as such, a number of scenarios exist in which Wisconsin is involved in a tie atop the standings at the end of the season.

Jan 10, 2012; Champaign, IL, USA; Illinois Fighting Illini guard Brandon Paul (3) is raised up by teammates and surrounded by fans after a 79-74 victory over the Ohio State Buckeyes at Assembly Hall. Photo Credit: Bradley Leeb-US PRESSWIRE

Both the Badgers and the Wolverines have the Illinois Fighting Illini to thank.

With Sunday’s loss, the Illini fell to just 2-6 in their past eight Big Ten Conference games. That includes losses to Wisconsin and Michigan as well as Penn State, Minnesota, Indiana and Northwestern. The two wins? Over conference leaders Ohio State and Michigan State, in perhaps two of the oddest Big Ten games of the season.

The victory over Michigan State was precisely the ammo the college basketball fan who dislikes Big Ten play uses on a regular basis. The score finished 42-41 in Illinois’s favor with both teams sinking fewer than a third of their shots. Brandon Paul was clearly the best player on the court for Illinois and he still needed 25 possessions to rack up his 18 points, playing the least terrible offensive game among many. The Michigan State crowd wasn’t any better — Draymond Green was limited five points on 13 possessions thanks to ineffectiveness, foul trouble and injury. The Spartans’ best line probably came from Brenden Dawson — a respectable 4-for-11 with 12 points, 13 rebounds (seven offensive) and just one turnover — but it still was hardly the model of efficiency.

The Ohio State victory was its own kind of odd precisely because Brandon Paul was exactly that model of efficiency lacking in the Michigan State game. Even with seven turnovers, Paul scored a phenomenal 43 points on 29 possessions, shooting a ridiculous 8-for-10 from three-point land, hitting 13-of-15 free throws. He nearly broke the true shooting percentage statistic, checking in at 87.4% on the night. It would be a career night for anybody, but such a display was particularly uncharacteristic from Paul. Illinois’s featured player has hit just 29.6% of his three-pointers in every other game this season. Prior to Sunday’s game against Michigan, Paul and Jordan Taylor — widely panned for his shooting woes this season — owned identical 52.0% true shooting numbers. Now imagine if Jordan Taylor turned the ball over three times per game, and you have Brandon Paul.

In what has been a wild Big Ten season, the Illini’s victories over the two clear best teams in the league have been perhaps the conference’s two biggest oddities. The Badgers (and the Wolverines) have to thank the Illini, however — without those two victories, they would just be watching Ohio State and Michigan State slug it out for the conference title. The margin for error is gone, but thanks to Bruce Weber’s team, the door is still cracked open for Wisconsin and Michigan to possibly slip through.

Tags: brandon paul, bruce weber, featured, Illinois, Michigan State, Ohio State